Anne-Mari Virolainen left politics and now focuses on lobbying the pharmaceutical industry for a very personal reason – “I didn’t have to think much”

“Isn’t that what they say, you can’t step into the same stream twice”, CEO of Lääkeindustriil Anne-Mari Virolainen states.

In the spring, he missed the opportunity to return to parliament. The Estonian briefly became a member of parliament after being elected CEO of Tela Saara-Sofia Sirénin (kok) instead, but asked for and was released from the task.

“Saara-Sofia called at the end of January and said that the situation would now be on. I replied that the situation would not be on for me. I am so satisfied with my job.”

The Estonian was elected CEO of the pharmaceutical industry interest organization in 2024. Before that, he was a member of parliament for 16 years.

“The only election tour I will do next spring is a tour of the pharmaceutical industry. We will go to university campuses to hold election panels.”

The Estonian says that he is extremely excited about his work and the possibilities of influencing it. He also has a very personal reason to work for the pharmaceutical industry.

“My husband and I carry the same recessively inherited gene defect. We lost our first child to a rare disease for which there is no cure.”

Daughter of Estonians There died in 2005 of Jansky-Bielshowsky syndrome. He was 14 years old.

“I didn’t have to think much about whether I want to work in parliament or in an environment where new things are developed and people are given hope.”

Investments can reach one billion a year

The financial footprint of the pharmaceutical industry in Finland is not always recognized, Virolainen says. It is a significant growth area.

According to Etla’s analysis, the industry employs around 10,000 people. In addition, it already invests more than 500 million euros annually in Finland.

“We are easily seen in the basket of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. However, the pharmaceutical industry is above all industrial policy.”

The pharmaceutical industry was given last year by the Minister of Finance For Riikka Purra (ps) growth promise. The industry promises to double its total investment in Finland by 2030, if the operating environment develops favorably.

The Estonian believes that the goal of doubling will be reached if the recently launched national coordination of clinical drug trials starts working smoothly. In the other Nordic countries, coordination has existed for years, but it has been missing in Finland. Our number of investigations has decreased.

“Companies have called the researchers they know and asked if they can take on the research. The answer may have been that we need to break up the queues. There would be a desire to do research, but no resources.”

Obtaining clinical drug trials requires that the hospitals have enough medical examiners, research nurses and coordinators.

Finland, however, would be the target country for the research with a lot of trump cards. The Estonian says that we have excellent patient registries, a progressive biobank law and a research-friendly, committed people.

“I was in Tampere getting to know one study and I heard that only two to three percent of the participants leave the study. The reason is, as a rule, moving to another location.”

You won’t be able to get away with it

Has there been anything about moving to the pharmaceutical industry that has surprised the Estonian?

“I immediately went to visit our member companies. I noticed how incredibly long working careers people have. This is a field where you can have fun throughout your career.”

While in the Parliament, Virolainen was never a member of the social and health committee because her husband is a doctor and she wanted to avoid conflict situations.

“I am not an expert in the pharmaceutical industry or medicine. My strength is that I know the structure of society and political decision-making.”

In the current work, according to Virolainen, it means, for example, identifying the dimensions of things. You don’t have to jump over small bumps.

“I can tell our members that we will assess the situation calmly and try to make an impact so that our point of view is also taken into account. Nothing can be accomplished by ranting. Life is about compromises.”

The perspective should be changed

There is no cheering in the Finnish state economy. The parties committed to the debt brake have agreed on the goal of adjusting the public finances by 8–11 billion euros by 2031.

It sets the framework for how much the country is willing to invest in medicines as well. The share of pharmaceutical expenditures in health care expenditures has remained fairly steady at around 14–15 percent.

The Estonian thinks that health should be seen as an investment and not an expense item.

“We should focus on ensuring that people remain able to work and that people who have already completed their working career are able to function for as long as possible.”

The Confederation of Business statement according to which sickness absences cost more than five billion euros per year in lost work input.

“I’m not trying to say that medicines are the solution to everything, but they belong in the toolbox of healthcare professionals,” Virolainen says.

Less than half of the new medicines approved in the EU are currently being used in Finland. The pharmaceutical industry is lobbying for the share to increase.

When the pharmacy sells eiota

Disruptions in the availability of medicines have become a problem in Finland and many other EU countries in the last ten years.

Last year, the Pharmaceutical Safety and Development Center Fimea received more than 2,700 reports from pharmaceutical companies about availability problems. There were especially disturbances in the availability of psychosis, depression, ADHD and pain medication.

Disruptive situations are unpleasant for patients. They endanger the continuity of treatments and cause people to travel long distances for medicines.

Are politicians and the pharmaceutical industry doing enough to solve the problem?

“It is in the interest of the pharmaceutical industry to bear responsibility and find solutions. However, the solution cannot be that companies are forced to bring medicines to the market. I believe in the functionality of the market,” says Virolainen.

Manufacturing back in Europe

Availability problems are a complex entity. They are affected by the shortage of raw materials, the vulnerability of supply chains and the concentration of production.

China dominates the manufacturing of pharmaceutical raw materials, and India is the world’s largest producer of generic drugs.

In the European Union, these vulnerabilities have been noticed. Last year, the European Parliament and the Council of Member States reached an agreement on a regulation on critical medicines, the goal of which is to improve access to, for example, antibiotics, insulin, vaccines and painkillers.

The idea is to diversify the supply chains of critical medicines and strengthen their manufacturing capacity.

The Estonian is of the opinion that there should be more pharmaceutical manufacturing in Europe than there is currently.

“Back in the early 2000s, every other new drug innovation was European. Now there are only one in five. Research and product development has moved to the United States and in recent years also to China.”

According to Virolainen, this is because the incentives are not in order in Europe.

“Top-notch research usually goes where there is capital. Especially at the stage when the idea should be commercialized as an innovation, it cannot be done without money.”

The Estonian hopes that in the future artificial intelligence will speed up drug research and curb its costs.

Storage has its price

One of the current issues on the pharmaceutical industry’s agenda is the mandatory storage law, which Petteri Orpon (kok) government proposed changes last week.

Until now, the law has obliged pharmaceutical factories, importers of medicines, healthcare and THL to keep certain important medicines and substances in their own warehouses. In the future, the number of medicines to be stored would increase.

In the summer, the pharmaceutical industry gave the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health a critical statement about the draft law. In the organization’s opinion, the cost of updating the list of medicinal substances for companies was estimated in the draft to be on the lower end, at 50 million euros.

According to STM, the costs of mandatory storage for pharmaceutical companies would rise from 188 million euros to around 295 million euros calculated at wholesale prices.

“Our biggest concern is that the list of medicines subject to mandatory storage has grown enormously large and not necessarily even very relevant in all respects,” says Virolainen.

The opposition period left its mark

While working as a Member of Parliament, Virolainen lived in Littoin and represented the Constituency of Varsinais-Suomi.

Today, he lives in Helsinki during the week and in Sysma during the weekends. His spouse Petri Virolainen works as the manager of the Päijät-Häme welfare area.

Virolainen spends his free time from May to October in the mushroom forest. He describes himself as a “crazy mushroom picker”.

“I start with ear mushrooms, then come chanterelles, sweet peas, oracuses and finally funnel cakes. There are quite a lot of mushrooms this fall.”

An Estonian sprays himself with perfume when going into the forest so that the bears and deer would smell him and go elsewhere.

Virolainen doesn’t miss Parliament, but he has told his former MP colleagues that he still follows their actions and “shouts from the stands”.

He doesn’t think that he would have been able to make the kind of decision he has now, to leave the parliament, when he was younger.

“During my first and second parliamentary term, I thought it was the best job in the world. Then I became a minister and I thought it was the best job in the world. After that, I was an opposition MP. Like the left-wing coalition Martti Korhonen he once said at the coffee table: not a single leaf of aspen moves in the opposition.”

The Estonian says that all his years in the parliament were good years, and he is happy that he got to experience them.

“However, I have given the institution of parliament everything I can get out of this person.”